Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Hyderabad Diary - Day two (8 Oct 2012)

(HICC building, main venue of the conference)

The Conference begins

The 11th Conference of Parties to the Convention
on Biological Diversity commenced ceremonially at Hyderabad today. A large
gathering was there, may be more than 5,000 people. (Eventually this could be
the largest gathering on biodiversity, as more than 14.000 participants have
been pre-registered).

The host country guests included the Minister of Environment and Forests
of India and the Chief Minister of Andra Pradesh.The opening session was
chaired by the Union Minister of Environment and Forests of India, Jayanti
Natarajan. In her impressive speech, she stressed the need of collective responsibility
by all to ensure sustainable living and also said that the expenditure on
biodiversity needs to be looked at as an investment.

Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, the Executive Secretary of
CBD urged that he wants all the countries at CBD to reach the Aichi Targets. He
also highlighted the need to release finances to achieve national level targets
of biodiversity and it as a crucial asset of the development.

The legacy of the oriental civilisations with is related to
biodiversity and its conservation was emphasized during the speeches.

I had opportunity to weak around what are the events to be
held within the premises, exhibitions, side events and side events. As usual, there
are a large number of side events on various themes and topics on biodiversity.

Hyderabad notes

We had the opportunity to travel by bus on 8th.
The passenger transport seems to be excellent as there were ample amount of
buses on roads, but not crowded much, and leading to various places. One
interesting issue was the seats reserved for ladies – 5 double seats on the
right side and 2 double seats on the left side were reserved for ladies. There
is a label above the seats, but was in Telingu (?) language only – girls and
ladies come and stand at the seat pointing the label, a silent request. Further
to this, double seat each on the left side of the bus were reserved for the
“Physically Handicapped Persons” (PHP) and “Senior Citizens”. This is something
we can copy Andra Pradesh!

(see the label/ notice just above the window)

(The diary will be updated daily, but may not be properly edited. I am
grateful for the Green Movement of Sri Lanka for providing the
opportunity to attend this event)